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Friday, July 20, 2007

The Homophobes Are Coming

h/t Working for Change

This is important. I've already sent in my two-cents to our senators. You can too.

President Bush just doesn't seem to get it. He continues to propose right-wing nominees for top posts in our government as if Congress was still controlled by rubber-stamp Republicans, eager to please their fundamentalist base.

The latest in Bush's series of inappropriate and ideologically-slanted nominees is Dr. James Holsinger of Kentucky, whom Bush has nominated to the post of United States Surgeon General. Holsinger has exhibited a pattern of hostility to gays and lesbians that is evident throughout his career. Consider:

Dr. Holsinger, along with his wife, co-founded the Hope Springs Community Church in Lexington, which operates a so-called "ex-gay" ministry -- with the type of "conversion therapy" that has been condemned by both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.

Holsinger currently serves as president of the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church; in this capacity he opposed a decision to allow a lesbian to be an associate pastor, and supported a pastor who would not permit an openly gay man to join the church.

He also authored a white paper in 1991 -- "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" -- trying to make a medical argument that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. (A University of Minnesota professor on human sexuality has said this paper would have received a "failing grade" in his class.)

Holsinger is, of course, entitled to his private religious views, however narrow and exclusionary they may be. But the U.S. Surgeon General needs to be the chief medical officer for ALL Americans -- not just the heterosexual ones. Tell your Senators to reject this nomination and force President Bush to choose competence over ideology for his next nominee.

6 Swings of the bat:

illusory tenant said...

Hmm. If Dr. Holsinger's methods can make gay people into straight ones, I wonder if they can make me gay.

Of course the "ex-gay" ministers would argue that being gay is a sickness, and that what they're doing is curing it, as opposed to making a healthy person ill.

The latter would be a job for their various imaginary demons and succubi, I suppose.

But it's not surprising that Bush would attempt to install some kind of sorcerer to the office of Surgeon General.

He's following in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, who consulted both astrological charts and Hal Lindsey.

capper said...

Given Bush's track record on all things scientific, is it really a surprise that he would put a charlatan in as the top doc? But I'm sure that Doc Holsinger would be able to cure the world of gays through stem-cell research, oh yeah, OK, not that, um...oh, I know, by recommending even more tax cuts for the rich. And then he will bring Terry Schiavo and Tammy Faye back from the dead.

Dad29 said...

Of course, if Hoslinger's "religious views" endorsed gay "marriage", that might make him a Surgeon General for ALL Americans?

How about the possibility that his understanding of medicine should govern the discernment process?

Other Side said...

Well, according to your dictat, daddio, Dr. Mengele would be a good candidate.

James Wigderson said...

I have an easy way to end the controversy - end the position permanently. No more Jocelyn Elders, no more Hoslinger.

Other Side said...

Actually, that's not a bad idea. I mean, really, what is the point of a surgeon general? Does anyone really listen to what the surgeon general has to say, unless it becomes controversial ... and as far as that is concerned, controversy must not happen very often because it's only then I'm reminded we have a surgeon general.